Page 112 of Fate, Interrupted

The dock is empty around me. I rub my hand across my face.

“He’s working on that part,” I say.

Declan is quiet for a moment, and when he speaks again his voice is more direct, the register of a man who has been patient long enough. “Silas. Is your friend actually a friend?”

I look out at the lot. The light has gone long and amber across the gravel.

“He’s thinking it through,” I say.

“Right.” A pause. “Okay.” The word carries everything he’s decided not to say. “Tell your friend—tell him the first three months are the hardest. But if he can get through the first three months, it gets easier. It gets considerably easier.” Another pause. “And tell him that Anya and I have a guest room. If he needs it. No questions asked.”

My chest tightens briefly, then releases.

“Thanks, Dec.”

“Call me when your friend makes up his mind,” he says. “And Silas.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t wait another six months.”

He hangs up.

I sit on the pallet with the phone in my hand and the lot in front of me and let the conversation settle. The thing that has been forming in my chest since the dining room and the loading dock, since before the Whittier meeting, takes on a shape that no longer has soft edges.

Brennan Hartley. Hartley Mill. A rental on the east side of town. A guest room with no questions asked.

I hear the footsteps before I see him.

Greer comes around the corner of the building at an easy pace, the pace of a man doing nothing, having very clearly interfered while pretending he hasn’t. He stops near the dock, not close and not far, and looks out at the lot.

He doesn’t ask who I was talking to. He only stands there for a long moment, and I wait, because Greer only speaks when he’s decided what he’s about to say is worth saying.

“Your father is a good man,” he says finally.

“I know,” I say.

“He built a real business. Out of nothing, even after losing your mother.” He pauses. “That’s not a small accomplishment.”

“No,” I say. “It isn’t.”

Greer nods slowly. He’s still looking at the lot, not at me. “He sees what he can see. And he protects what he can protect. That’s who he is.” Another pause. “It doesn’t mean he can see everything.”

I look at him.

He turns enough so that I can see his profile. It’s the face of a man who has been in this family’s orbit for thirty years, who has absorbed more than is ever said, who has been present for every significant thing that has happened in this operation.

“A man has to figure some decisions out for himself,” Greer says. “Without waiting for permission.” He looks at me directly. “Whatever you’re figuring out, do it quickly. You may have less time than you think.”

“I’ll be inside,” he says.

He goes, and I sit with the phone in my hand and Declan’s voice still in my ear and Greer’s words sitting in my chest alongside everything else.

Figure it out quickly. The window is shorter than it looks.

I already know what I’m going to do.

I’ve known since I walked out of the meeting on Ninth Street and stood in the parking lot and understood there was no version of staying that ended well. Not for the operation, not for the pack, and not for Norah, who stood up to two guys in an alley and defended her right to choose.